I got a cell phone

Big news!! Peace Corps gives us cell phones!!

6576 1214 To dial from the states use 011 + 507+ 65761214

I can reveive calls for free and I´m pretty sure I get decent service in my site.

My address also changed slightly.
For conventional mail:

Joseph Goessling
Cuerpo de Paz / Panama
0834-02788 Entrega General
Republica de Panama

Well I´m finally off to my site for real. Its kinda scary know that my service is offically begining and that I won´t be around gringos for long periods of time. I´m also nervous because unlike my site visit there is no schedule now. I hope to stay busy to keep my mind off off of how different it is. Luckily I have alot of things I could be doing. They have a daily soccer game at 5 every day that is pretty competitive. I also have alot of work to do, the PC requires a lengthy community assesment to be completed as well as a health survey. This helps establish what work needs to be done in the community and is a measure of progress.
Lastly the community next to mine has all the money the design for a new aquaduct. They have alot more work to do before construction actually starts. Most of the aquaducts here are not really engineered, they just make sure the water source is higher than the town. I´m bringing an altimeter to roughly measure the elevations. This way you can do pressure calcuations to possibly change PVC pipe sizes and save money. I need to do this for the new aquaduct as well as the current one in my town that is having problems. All very exciting stuff.


In other news we were sworn in as official volunteers at a nice ceremony at the Canal Museum in Panama city. A representative from the Embassy was there as well as a few other government agency people and tons of current PC volunteers. There was only one other kid that wore a jacket. ( I was told before coming that I should bring a blazer for swear in... in reality half the kids didn´t even bring ties. )

We went out in Panama city to a bar called Unplugged that played tons of rock and metal music yet was still the happening scene. You could rent a hookah their for $5 bucks and there weas tons of vlunteers there to celebrate with us.. Beers were consumed and the most random guest showed up.

DREW from Villanova stepped out of a car while we were hanging out at the bar. I had no idea but he was travelling through the Americas, he had no idea I was doing PC in Panama. He was had just visited a guy on the rugby team Breslin who is doing PC in Guetemala. We caought up on a bunch of things and then said our good byes.

Canal Expansion

Despite all the crazy news in the world about Korea the big news in Panama is a about the Canal Vote. The Vote is to decide if the a new set of locks should be built to accommodate ¨post panamax ships¨ these are boats that are too wide for the canal right now. There is a definite need for this as some of these boats go around soutAmericaca, our just ship there goods across the country. Some boats also wait days to get through to Canal because it is operating at close to full capacity. The government and the Canal authority ( the company that took control of the canal after the US gave to Panama) hava lotot of money invested into the ÿes¨campaign. In trainingaing village many t-shirts and stickers were given out. The ¨no¨campaign is a much more grass roots anti-establishment organization. From what I can see the two sides have the following arguments. YES There is a definite need for a larger canal due to global trade. The canal has long been tied to Panama´s history and a vote no would be turning your back on your history. It will bring money to the country and all the money to build it is going to be collected through raised tolls on boats. I heard that the financing of the canextremelyxtremly hard because you are essentially predicting what global trade will be in years to come. Lastly they say that the construction will provide tons of direct and indirect jobs.
NO
The no basicallybasicly assert that the government is corrupt (corruption is a major problem in Panama) and that all the money will stay with the wealthy people. They also say that there is not environmental study and the impacts could be huge. They say there are also some scenarios where Panama would end up footing the bill too.

On to the pictures.

This is the house will I will be living after I stay with my host family for 3 months. My host family is a mother with a few of her kids ranging from the oldest daughter that has kids of her own to a young child. They live right across the way. The house has 2 rooms in the back: a kitchen and a bedroom and a large porch. Right now a school teacher is living there but she will be moving out.
We had a so called ¨Tom Selleck Challenge¨ you can judge the winncrewis crewis all of the guys (there are only 2 girls) from my training group that are living in the Bocas province. They are all really fun guys and I can´t wait to hang out with them even more. Clockwise from myself is Ryu and Brandon who are Masters International students. This means they are getting their engineering masters by doing Peace Corps, they have taken caqueducts aquaducts and other related things so they are a great resource. They also have known each other from freshman year of college and by shear chance ended up in Panama together and in Bocas. Jack is next, he is fluent in Spanish and also was a former volunteer from Bangledesh. Unfortunatly all the volunteers there were evacuated because of violence. Colin and Kevin are next and they are just straight up chill dudes.

These are all pictures in Vicente´s house. The pic above you can see him in the hammock with his youngest son. As a whole all the kids were very quiet. Above that picture is Roy he is always smiling and is also deaf. There is not much programs for deaf kids here so I´m not sure what is going to happen with him.

I think they are about in the middle of the range of wealth in the community. They could afford to buy rice and sardines occasionally but still do not have any excess of spending money. Vicente is 35 and in the shape of a high school wrestler, he walked way faster than me and still carried a Chacara (traditional bag, you can see small ones hanging) full of banana´s. I´d say it weighed easily 60 pounds.

Valle

I just got back from visiting my site for 5 days. It is pretty big with a few tores, a big soccer field and a brand new school that kids come to from all over the area. I lived with my work partner, Vicente. Vicente is the president of one of the 2 aquaducts in town. He is very quiet but really smart and a very respected person in town. He took me all over and introduced me to different families.

One of the days I hiked up this montain on one of the sides of the valley to go to my work partners farm. Here is the view of the town from way up. The only building you can really see i the school with the blue roof. The government is just finishing this and rumor has it that the President may be taking a helicopter to come see it and meet with people in November.

This is taken from Vicentes house of the new school you can also see some of the soccer field which is all dirt. Every day at 5 they have a soccer game for adults/teenagers. Its pretty competitive and they are all really good. Valle feilds two soccer teams for the local league and 2 baseball teams.
This is Vicent and his freind Benecio on top of the town new water tank. A NGO came in a built this take which has a sand filter without consulting anyone. The NGO did it as a learning project for its workers, however it has really messed up water in part of the town. I{m not exactly sure why but after the tank was built part of the town (the part where I will be living) goes without water for a few days at a time. This will probabably be one of the first things I work on.

This photo is also from the hike to Vicentes finca or farm. You can see the ocean and the nearby port town of Almirante. This is the town where Chiquita Banana is based out of. They have huge boats with the Chiquita logo as well as a big packing plant. All around the region are banana farms.

More random pics

Once again not alot of time to update the blog hopefully next weekend will be better. These are just some more random pictures from my camera. This one above is in Old Panama City. You can see the really old chuch as well as a pretty serious baseball game. The beach looks really nice but you would have to be crazy to swim near the city. It makes Boston harbor look like a pool. I was told there are no sewage treatment plants in Panama city and they just pump it out into the ocean.

The Peace Corps trainees put on a Bingo night to raise money for the library in town. The library was really lacking on books. They had abunch of high school text books from the 70çs and a really old encyclopedia. We raised about $300 from selling bigo cards and food. It was a great community activity, many family made food and helped sell it. Other people set up the sound system and there was even traditional Panamanean dances done by kids. We used peaces of corn for the chips.

In this picture is my buddy Colin and the family of my Spanish teacher. The guy with that hat used to work for Peace Corps and speakes fluent english which was kinda strange to have a redular conversation, or know that he can always understand us talking. You get really used to speaking in english and assuming that no one can understand. At one point my freind came up and said ¨Hey Vicky has 3 kids? she looks really good¨ he didn´t know at all that her husband was there and understood it all. ACKWARD!

This is a picture of my twin sisters in the traditional naguas. My families Ngobe frinds in town made them for the girls.

This week I am going to my site for the first time, and will be meeting up with my work partner to plan out the first 3 months in site.

Tech week and partying

Tech week was a alot of hard work. We built 4 composting latrines for another Ngobe vilage.

A composte latrine is essentially just a big box you poop in and then put sawdust or other dry material in, and in 6 months it turns into composte and you take it out a side door. Not to sound like a huge nerd but these things are really great. They are good because they don't spread shit around so people don't get sick, and you can also use the composte for crops. I like them really though because they don't smell and there are no flies. This may not sound like a huge deal, but I havn't actually sat on a latrine seat since I've been here due to the stench mosquitos and cockroaches which are all overpowering.

The week was a great success on thursday I woke up after sharing a double bed with my buddy Rob and walked to the creek to wash my face. I'm about there and notice a lot of guys down there with a fire going. When I arrive they are slaughtering a 90 pound pig!! In the same river I came to wash up in! They ended up smoking the pig for a few hours with banana leaves. It was soooo good.

No more time in the internet cafe so I need to go.

Pictures from Nutivi

All of these pcitures are from the Ngobe village of Nutivi where a group of EH (environmental health) trainees had our culture week. The week consisted of Ngobe (pronounced No bae) language clases in the morning and classes about culture in the afternoon. We also built a rainwater collection system for the school and taught a charla, I did handwashing to 2nd grade.

It was a little hard dealing with their culture. They do not talk much unless they are talked to so comunication is a little bit taxing. Everyone speaks spanish and are very freindly besides that. To get there we needed to take a 4 hour boat ride across the bay and up a river. The river was a little bit hairy at times and we needed to get out and walk a bit. It kinda reminded me of the Saco but more rocky, and fast and with indengionous people living on it.

A quick rundown of the pictures. There first pic in the upper left is of volley ball game. They have nightly games and are really good despite the fact that I am taller than the vast majority of people. The gringos lost but put up a good fight. The next is a huge bamboo tree, it was just so big it deserved a picture. Bamboo good for tons of things from building pull up bars to houses. The next pic is just one more from when I was painted, its old. Lastly there was a beutiful river we all got to go swimming in. We jumped out of a tree into the river and also used scuba masks to search for shrimp. In the backround you can see the mountains and a vilage up on the hillside.

Es todo, next week is tech week where I learn to build composting latrines bien pretty.

My site assignment.

Less than an hour ago I found out that I am going to Valle in Bocas del Toro. Bocas is the province in the north west of Panama that borders on Costa Rica. My site description includes: you will be living in a tropical paradise surrounded by lush forests. The site has about 1000 Indindgenous Ngobe people. The town is accesible by a Chiva which is essentially a truck that drives about an hour from the main road. A previous Peace Corps volunteer has designed a water system for this town so I have plenty of work to do upon arrival.
Bocas is also a upcoming tourist region. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocas_del_Toro_Province
(you know I love that wikipedia!)

Thats all for now, we are going out to celebrate now!

Pics from my site visit.

This is Alan with the worm box we made. It may not look like alot but it will really make your garden grow. That is also the area where we lit the fire to smoke the bats out.
This is when I was getting painted up by Alan´s Abuela. You can´t really see the paint because it goes on semi clear and needs to dry in order to darken.
This is us in the dug out canoe. I was in the middle and with out a peace of bamboo so i mostly bailed water because the boat was a bit leaky.
This is after we caought all the fish. You can really see how painted I am with this. More pictures to come but the blog is kinda a pain in the butt.

PICTURES!

This is a group of us in a Peace Corps Land Cruiser coming back from vaccinations.

This is my sister Emmy and one of the two twins (I can´t tell them apart!) this is also a nice view out of the back of my house. I spend alot of time out here because the house doesn´t get many breezes. You can see right above the chair my shower with the blue tarp as a curtain. For a while there was a birds nest with little birds in it. They must have learned to fly because they are no longer there.

This is my aunt, Naidja, preparing some ojaldre. Ojaldre is basicly fried dough, it is ussually served for breakfast some times with cheese but never with powerderd sugar. This is also the extent of our kitchen. There is no running water but the gas stove is behind her. Much of the high powered cooking (boiling water for rice or making soup) is done by my father outside using wood. I think my family is different than most because my dad enjoys cooking ( he used to be a chef). Other typical dishes include bullo which is crushed corn in a tube, white rice with a small amount of vegetables and some chicken. There in general is alot of fried food, fried hot dogs, frid chicken and more I can´t think of right now. I love it but know its not too healthy.

Here is a current volunteer that meet us at the airport. He visitied the same Embera site that I did but got a different design than mine.

Horse back riding, spear fishing and bat killing

This weekend I visited Alan at an Embera site. WHAT A WEEKEND!
This indigneous group was relocated when a major hydroelectric dam was built about 20 years ago and flooded out there community. The government cleared a bunch of land and told them that this was to be there new town. These people did not used to live in communities but rather as large family groups in the jungle. Anyways now to the exciting part.

I showed up friday afternoon and pretty much hung out. Saturday after breakfast we had a matanza de mursialagos (bat killing) Alan just moved into a really nice house that is up about a meter off the ground with a roof made of palm fronds (pencha) His problem is that bats also live in his pencha. Now we checked and they are not vampire bats but its still very unerving to wake up and have bat shit on top of your mosquito net. His roof covers his porch and part of the porch is not finished. So we built a small fire under the unfinished part to smoke the bats out. We got up in his rafters with broom handels. There were also a a handful of kids around with small clublike sticks. We started shaking the rafters and bats just start flying out. It was just like hitting a whiffle ball, they fly pretty straight but curve a bit. All in all I smacked about 7 bats out of the air.

Later that day Alans house mom painted me up with jugua, which is a fruit that stains your skin kinda like iodine. Right now i have a design covering nearly my whole body, and once again i have several pictures but no way to get them off my camera. The jagua is used in Embera festivals, and holidays. The paint goes right up to my upper lip and all the way down to my toes. I thought I stuck out as a gringo before, but now i really feel like it. I´m in the bus terminal/massive mall and people literally are stopping in place to see the blue gringo.
Saturday Alan and I also built a worm box for his new house. A worm box is alot like a composte pile except you add california redworms and a small amount horse shit. This makes aparentlly the illest fertilizer ever. Alan was going to use it for his aloe plant.

Sunday we woke up early because we were going spear fishing. We had procurred some horses which were allegedly the nicest horses in town. On a whole animals and pets are treated horrible here, and often are in a constant state of starvation or sickness. The main reason is because none of them are neutored or castrated, so yea i´ve seen my of dogs going at it.
So i got on the horse for my first time, not having any idea how to make it go or stear it. (not actually that hard) As soon as we left town i was glad i had it because we were riding through mud that was a bout knee deep and full of roots. We rode for about an hour, crossing 3 rivers.

Thisreminded me of that scene from Sleeping Beauty were then knight is being chased through the thorn forest by the dragon. Now there was no dragon, but anyone that has ever cleared land using a machete knows that when you cut a branch you cut it at and angle. This means that they are like spears or vietnamese punji stakes. Besides the pointy things i was constantly having to push away huge palm fronds or platano leaves. Lastly I was rolling with a machete in my own saddle so If I wanted to be a badass i could have unsheathed my sword.

I had 2 close calls. At one point we had just crossed a river and were about to go up the steep acent back to the other side. The other two horses did this without much problem. My horse started up and then decided to leep forward. I wasn´t ready at all and almost fell off the back.
When had finally got back my horse got a little riled up by another male horse and started bucking a bit. Luckily i got the guy under control a little bit.

The story is that when the lake was created, the missionary name Padre Pablo through about 15 Tilapia (some asian white fish) into the pond, and now they are everywhere. They can grow easily over a foot and are tasty.

We had finally arived a a marshland (the beginings of the flooded out river valley) and we got off the horses and into a dug out canoe that i can´t believe floated. We road in the canoe for about 45 minutes and finally found a spot. Using a chuso ,which is a long straight peace of metal about an eight of and inch thick. At one end there is a sharp point the other has a really think rubber band. You hold it just like a pool stick and put you thumb through a loop in the rubber band. This allows you to hold it like a pencil and just let go with one hand. The actual spear fishing is an art I don´t have a knack for. You need to exhale your breath underwater so you sink to the bottom then push yourself around on the bottom looking for a tilapia house. There are tons of plants everywhere and the water was dirty from the recent rain so visibility was way down. The native guy we were with speared about 5, and we ended up catching more with the help of someone elses gill net. We ended up riding back with about 10 Tilapia and gave all but 2 away to the neighbors.

Off to visit a volunteer

Que Pasa?
Today I´m going to visit a volunteer in a town in the west of Panama (closer to Columbia) called Piariati. I´m kinda nervous because it is my first time using the bus system by myself. There are 2 types of buses here. There are your traditional greyhound type busses that go from major city to major city. These buses somtimes have movies dubbed over and spanish are always freezing cold. The other type is called a Diablo Roja (Red Devil) . These are old school busses from the United States that failed the safety inspections. They are all decorated with bright murals and huge chrome tailpipes. I hear some in the city even have neon lights outside and velvet and black lights on the inside. Usually they are blasting music, and are quite cheap.

This week was much like last week. In the technical sessions we did more stuff with aquaducts and met with more current volunteers. On monday we built a rain collection system for the family that lives near our class. We cut a line in PVC and bent it around the lip of the family´s metal roof . The pipe then drains into a 55 gallon drum. This is a major improvement for the family because they used to have to walk down a steep hill to get water that was obviously dirty. In spanish class we have been discussing about alot of culture and learning slang words. One of the more loco things is ¨chicha fuerte¨Chicha is a any fruit drink, most of the time is is just powder but other times is is real juice(I drink this a pretty much every meal except breakfast which is coffee). Chicha fuerte is essecially grain alcohol mixed with a little juice. Sometimes in the campo (rural areas) they put battery acid in it!! I´m trying to stay away from that.

In other news my parents have succefully moved into Cambridge and are in the process of unpacking. They also sold my Cadillac.

Panama es muy muy bueno

Hey everyone,
I finnally got to an internet cafe. I think that this is the best way for me to get in contact with everyone. Hopefully I should be able to check this about once a week.
I´m doing great. I´m at my training site in Santa Clara. Its a suburb of Panama (about an hour out) the family I´m staying with is very nice. I live in a 3 room house made of concrete block walls and no paint. My parents Jeronimo and Dilsa are both grandparents and very talkative, the father speaks slow and is very patient with my lack of Spanish and poor proneunciation, he also knows a few words in Engish so its very helpful. I have my own room with a desk and and a bed. My bed is has a thin mattress and Spongebob sheets, but he´s BLACK! I think is must be a factory defect of something. I also have my Mosquito net up to protect from Malaria and Dengue fever.
The house has no indoor plumbing only a sink outside used for just about everything from filling up pòts for cooking to washing clothes. The latrine is disgusting. It is just about completly full and I despise going in there. My father has dug out a new one (its like a 20ft hole) and is waiting to purchase the concrete supplies. I told him I would help mix this concrete up. He said he doesn´t know much about it, but the Peace Corps gave us a whole bunch of concrete info that I showed him and he was thrilled. Lastly, the entire time I have been here the elecricity has been broken. This is good and bad. It sucks cause it gets dark at 6 and then its dark, its good because there is not much else to do but talk. Alot of my friends say that their families don´t talk abd only watch TV.

Every day for I wake up around 7:00 shower in the outdoor shower, and go to Spanish class at another house. I´m in the Intermediate medium level and have 2 other people in my class. Class meets for 4 hours. The community has an amazing income disparity because the house I have classes in has a washer and dryer indoor plumbing a bathroom, a big TV and 2 cars. My Spanish has definitly been progressing but Í don´t really attribute that much to the class, its more that i just have to speak all the time.
In the afternoon I have a Tecnical class for 4 more hours. I really like this class, we meet a little out of town under a Ranchero, which is a house with Palm fronds for a roof. This class is tought by a girl names Tess who has served in Panama for 3 years. There is also almost always a current volunteer in Environmental health there to help. We have toured a nearby gravity fed water system, met with a water comittee, and had several engineering demonstrations with tubes called the maquaduct. Yesterday we built an organic garden, and learned how to sharpen and use a machete. Aparently everyone gets very familiar with the machete as you use if for everything in the field.
Outside of classes, I bought a guitar for $40 and I play to my families delight. I don´t go out on weekdays, but on the weekend and thursday night, we go to a bar which is owned by the family of one of my amigos. They have free billards and several kinds of 50 cent beers. I missed out on the soccer game because my family is very religous. I went to church for 3 hours on tuesday and 2 more today. They are a type of evangelical. Besides that everyone here is really cool, the people are much more diverse than I expected. There are people from California, to my boy Jake who´s a frat boy from Washington state, to my buddy Colin who is has a small world but a great guy. I´m the only person from New England.

Lastly I don´t know when I´ll be able to post pictures because I don´t have the chord for my camera and apparently they don´t sell that type in Panama. Yáll can get in touch with me if you write me and email.

If you want to mail me something

I'll be trying to read emails and respond when I have time. I'm not sure how much internet access I will have so we shall see. I also would like regular snail mail, with pictures newspaper clippings, stickers, or some homeade art to hang up.

Some notes on sending me mail. It can take from ten days to well over a month for mail coming from Panama to the US, it is also probability similar reverse. Some advice if you’re interested in mailing me.

-Put post cards in envelopes or they may end up on the wall of a local post office.
-Number your letters you send me that way I'll know if one was misplaced.
-If you want to send me a package, please do not send anything of high value because there is no guarantee it will arrive. Packages should be sent in padded enveloped because they are opened and taxed less.

For the next three months when I'm at training I can be reached at:

(by fedex, UPS, etc.)

Peace Corps/Panamá American Embassy

Edif. 95, Ave. Vicente Bonilla

Ciudad del Saber, Clayton

Corregimiento de Ancón

Ciudad de Panamá

República de Panamá

Tel: 507.317.0038 Fax: 507.317.0809

Atentamente: Your Name

(by regular mail)

Your name

Cuerpo de Paz/Panamá

Apartado postal 0834-02788

Panamá, República de Panamá

Final Good Bye

So I'm flying out on my flight booked and paid for by the government, tomorrow morning. I'll be in Washington D.C. for two days at the Staging event where I will learn the basics about the Peace Corps. Then I will depart for my 3 months of training outside of Panama City.

I'm still figuring out this whole blog thing. I heard there was a way to send out an email when I update. If anyone knows how to do this let me know. It seems kinda confusing right now.

I wanted to thank everyone for so many well wishes. I really has amazed me how much people have done, from good-bye calls, to the executive theme final throwdown, to all aunts uncles and little cousins all saying blessing for me at the Cape this past weekend. I hope to hear from you guys in one form or another, and have brought many pictures to remember everyone.

Welcome to my first ever blog. Obviously it will be about my service in Panama with the Peace Corps. I decided to to a blog because it will take less time to get the word out. I think uploading huge mass emails could take quite some time on a dial up modem